It Really Is About What You Stand For

An upstate New York Republican is slated Tuesday to shatter the congressional record of former Brooklyn Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

Elise Stefanik, 30, is favored to win in New York’s upstate 21st District and break history as the youngest female to win a seat in the House. Holtzman was sworn in at age 31 in 1973 at a time when women weren’t even allowed in the congressional gym.

“I’m just sorry it’s a not a Democrat,” Holtzman told The Post. “But hats off to her. We need more young women in Congress.”

We do, but then there’s the kicker:

“I think more important than gender, it’s what people stand for,” said Holtzman, a lawyer in Manhattan.

That’s true too. But people like Stefanik, according to the current meme on the left, aren’t supposed to exist. Neither are two other Republican women running this year: Mia Love and Joni Ernst. But they do and have done well this election cycle.

Perhaps the lesson from all of this is that the best way to develop talent is through adversity and not entitlement. That’s something that the Democrats should think about as they move to coronate another hippie dreamer with the goal of having the “first woman President”. The fact that the Turks and Pakistanis (to say nothing of the Canadians, Brits and Israelis) beat us to having a woman as head of government should tell us that our whole gender construct is a disaster, and that nearly a half century of trying to “fix” it hasn’t achieved the desired objective.

But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, and that’s pretty much the norm in American politics these days.